America’s addiction to sugar, carbs

GLENN ELLIS |
1/23/2017, 10:43 a.m.

Strategies for Well-Being

There’s no doubt that Americans are addicted to sugar. We consume an average of 150 pounds per person per year. For many of us, that means we eat our own weight in sugar every year! So it might be helpful to find out what that means – what sugar really is, what food value it has and what problems it causes.

The sugar industry is big: $100 billion per year. As with any other billion-dollar business, there’s bound to be a ton of information that will support such an empire anywhere you look – the media, bookstores, advertising, etc.

Boats like this don’t like to be rocked.

On the other side is a group claiming that white sugar is poison, a harmful drug barely differing from cocaine, etc. Some claims are true; others are unreferenced opinion, often bordering on hysteria. For our purposes, we’ll focus on what we really can verify about sugar and hopefully avoid the errors of disinformation on both sides of the fence.

Start with white sugar. It is made by refining sugar cane, a process involving many chemicals. Or from beets, whose refinement also involves synthetic chemicals and charcoal. The big problem is that the finished product contains none of the nutrients, vitamins or minerals of the original plant. White sugar is a simple carbohydrate, which means a fractionated, artificial, devitalized byproduct of the original plant. The original plant was a complex carbohydrate, which means it contained all the properties of a whole food: vitamins, minerals, enzymes.

Refined sugar from beets and sugar cane is sucrose. Up to the mid 1970s, sucrose was the primary sugar consumed by Americans. That changed when manufacturers discovered a cheaper source of refined sugar: corn. A process was evolved that could change the natural fructose in corn to glucose, and then by adding synthetic chemicals, change the glucose back into an artificial, synthetic type of fructose called high fructose.

“High-fructose corn syrup” is highly valued by food manufacturers. It’s easy to transport in tanker trucks. It isn’t susceptible to freezer burn, as is sugar. It has a long shelf life and keeps foods from becoming dry. It gives bread and baked products a wonderful color. It’s also cheaper than white sugar, partly because of generous federal subsidies and trade policies that encourage farmers to grow more corn. Fast food chains add it to their products because it is cheaper. It’s in the sauces, in the condiments, in the breadings, in the buns and in the drinks. It is the commercially preferred artificial sweetener. What’s worse than sugar? Now you know.

Natural fructose is contained in most raw fruits and vegetables. It is a natural food. Moderate amounts of natural fructose can be easily digested by the body with no stress or depleting of mineral stores. Natural fructose does not cause rollercoaster blood sugar, unless the person overdoes it. Natural fructose is not addictive.